In memory and honor of Al-Mutanabbi Street
By: by Laura Blacklow
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge, Massachusetts]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Cultural property; Destruction and pillage; Politics in art; Freedom of expression; Pop-up books; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"My book, In memory and honor of Al-Mutanabbi Street, has two covers: one for the Western-language audience, and another for the Middle-Eastern reader. After unfolding the jackets, the viewer sees, on facing pages, a poem I wrote, in English and Arabic calligraphy. My words focus on the seemingly disparate traditions that end up connecting booklovers of my country with those in Iraq. I pay tribute to what was lost in March, 2007, when a car bomb tore apart al-Mutanabbi Street, the ancient place of book sellers. I also honor the spirit of those who have rehabilitated the area and who, to this day, insist on freedom of expression despite harsh new laws and aggressive efforts at limiting the dissemination of written words. Inside pages consist equally of ethereal and defined images, popping up and moving back and forth between two familiar visual forms of representation: silhouettes (of buildings, trees, and figures), and the schema of the Baghdad street map (centering on al-Mutanabbi Street). To me, it is fitting that the overall form should be a book that gently extends the boundaries of tradition, while simultaneously referencing a whole history of tomes based on the reading - in all its manifestations - of visual and verbal languages. I hope that my efforts will encourage and strengthen the worldwide community of intellectuals and artists who, as Doris Lessing described in The Golden Notebook, push the bolder up the mountain"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"A specialist in non-silver photography, printmaking, and book arts, Blacklow holds a BFA in painting from Boston University and received her MFA in Photography from the Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, NY) in 1977. Her mixed media work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), among others, and collected by Harvard's Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA), George Eastman House (Rochester, NY), and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY). Blacklow's awards include a grant from the St. Boltoph Club; Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; National Endowment for the Arts and New England Foundation for Arts; and the Polaroid Corporation. She has taught at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, MA), the Art Institute of Boston (Boston, MA), and has been on faculty at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for 17 years"--The Photographic Resource Center website (viewed July 29, 2015).
Notes: Printed in an edition of 4.

Medium: Van Dyke brown print and cyanotype on rag paper (with pop-ups).

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.

In English, with Arabic translation.

In English and Arabic.